So this past Tuesday I went to see Salt, not that I really had a choice. My mother and sister wanted to see Inception, of which I had seen twice already, and all that was left at the theater were a bunch of movies I had already seen, a bunch that I didn't want to see and then there was Salt. I knew just about nothing about the movie except that it was about spies and that it had Angelina Jolie. And as I sat in the theater waiting for the movie to start, I remembered that I saw the trailer months ago. And in fact, I remembered there was a brief scene in the trailer for a third of a second, that showed the great curve of Angelina Jolie's butt [side note: isn't that subliminal marketing? I watched the trailer months ago, and this scene was no more than a second, yet it was ingrained in my memory]. Anyhow, I thought to myself, okay, at least there's that to look forward to. But when the movie reached its end, the scene never occurred. The old bait and switch! Anyhow, I took the liberty of taking a screenshot from the trailer to show you what I mean:

The aforementioned curve of Angelina Jolie's butt. You'll notice the lighting in the room gives it the perfect definition. I hope I'm not bursting any bubbles when I tell you that this snippet isn't in the movie.

Butt I digress. I ultimately chose this movie because I heard mixed to good things about it. And after Toy Story 3 and Inception, heck, "mixed to good things" was good enough for me!

The movie follows Angelina Jolie's Evelyn Salt, a highly trained CIA operative, as it's quickly discovered that she may be a spy, raised and working for the Russians. But through the duration of the movie, there is uncertainty of where her true allegiance lies. The story is thin, opting for more action scenes with dialogue scenes used as an excuse to string together more action. As the movie neared the end, I thought that it was pretty good and for a moment, it seemed as though they wouldn't go the conventional route of revealing a traitor who set her up. But right as I thought that, they did exactly what I hoped they wouldn't do, and I thought, "awww".

Even so, the movie was decent. The action is fun and never seems to let its guard down. The only unfortunate thing is that it's a lot of generic action — I left the movie without any particular scenes sticking in my head. The story is a bit contrived as well, trying to stick in real life stories with fiction (ie. that Lee Harvey Oswald was really a Russian spy in their prototype program). It's also a bit ridiculous seeing a super slimmed down Jolie taking down multiple men who were twice or thrice her size. But we can suspend our belief.

The ending leaves more to be desired, it leaves things open for a sequel as well. If anything, at least they've got the titles set up easily. The next movie can be called Saltier and the third one can be called Saltiest. Or perhaps they could go the team up route and pair her with a male spy named Pepper, calling it Salt and Pepper. Yes, they could have Pepper be a doctorate grad in physics, just so could call him... Dr. Pepper. Bad humour over, I'm done. Later geeks!

"Yah, but I'd rather see [Angelina Jolie] in some movie like [Salt] than one of those serious movies where she's in a mental institution running around like a crazy person."-Howard Stern on Salt